Texas House Restricts Abortions in a Move That Could Force Clinics to Shut

Many protesters at the Texas Capitol on Sunday wore T-shirts in support of Planned Parenthood.Credit
Ricardo B. Brazziell/Statesman.com, via Associated Press

HOUSTON — The Republican-dominated Texas Legislature inched closer on Monday to passing some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country as the State House of Representatives approved a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and hold abortion clinics to the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers.

Advocates for abortion rights said the measures would force dozens of abortion providers around the state to close and leave only a handful in a few major cities that are able to meet what they described as excessive, costly and medically unnecessary restrictions. Opponents of abortion, including Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and other Republican leaders, said the legislation was aimed at protecting women’s health and unborn children.

After the State Senate passed a version of the bill last week, Mr. Dewhurst, who has called for overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, posted a message on Twitter celebrating passage of the bill, known as Senate Bill 5. He wrote: “We fought to pass SB5 thru the Senate last night, & this is why!” Attached was a graphic produced by opponents of the bill that said the legislation would force many clinics to shut their doors.

A few hours later, Mr. Dewhurst attempted to play down his original post, saying that both he and the bill were “unapologetically pro-life” and for women’s health. But opponents said his first message demonstrated that the legislation was an unconstitutional attempt by Republican leaders at a backdoor statewide ban on abortion. In January, Mr. Perry told those gathered at an annual anti-abortion rally in Austin that his goal was to “make abortion, at any stage, a thing of the past” and that the ideal world was a world without abortion.

“This bill would endanger the health and safety of millions of women in Texas,” said Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and a daughter of Ann Richards, the former Texas governor. “If this passes, abortion would be virtually banned in the state of Texas, and many women could be forced to resort to dangerous and unsafe measures.”

The State House approved the measures Monday morning on a 95-to-34 vote. Lawmakers first gave preliminary approval to the bill shortly after 3 a.m., after hours of debate and attempts at delays by Democrats. Though the State Senate passed a version of the bill last week, the legislation did not contain the ban on abortions after 20 weeks. The Senate was scheduled to take up the bill passed by the House on Tuesday under a tight deadline. It has until midnight Tuesday to take action, when the special session of the Legislature ends.

Aspects of the bill, including the 20-week ban, have been blocked as unconstitutional by courts in several other states and even if adopted by Texas would be quickly challenged in court.

The Texas House voted to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks after fertilization, or 22 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period. As such, it passed a measure similar to the one the House of Representatives approved last week in Washington. The bills in Texas and Washington were based on the medically disputed theory that fetuses at that stage of development can feel pain.

If the bill passed, Texas would join Alabama, Nebraska, Oklahoma and eight other states that have approved so-called fetal pain initiatives, according to Elizabeth Nash, the state issues manager of the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. Mainstream medical groups say the fetal brain is not developed enough to feel pain at that stage of development, but a handful of doctors contend otherwise.

Supreme Court rulings have established that a woman has a right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, around the 24th week of pregnancy, and 20-week limits in Arizona, Georgia and Idaho have been blocked by court orders.

The bill would require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility. Similar measures are being challenged in court in Alabama, Mississippi and North Dakota. The legislation would require clinics to meet surgical-center standards, mandating that abortions take place in hospital-style operating rooms even if nonsurgical procedures were being done, opponents of the bill said.

Mr. Perry has called the admitting privileges and provisions for ambulatory surgery standards “matters of common sense.” Other Republicans have disputed predictions that the restrictions will lead to widespread clinic closures.

Opponents of the bill, hundreds of whom packed the Capitol in Austin and shouted “Shame!” after the preliminary predawn vote, argued that abortion providers already follow standard regulations and that the legislation would shutter all but 5 of the 42 facilities providing safe, legal abortions in Texas, including those run by Planned Parenthood as well as other entities. The Texas Medical Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed the measures.

The Legislature’s 140-day regular session ended May 27, but Mr. Perry kept lawmakers in Austin after he called a 30-day special session, whose agenda only he, as governor, could set. On June 11, Mr. Perry added the abortion legislation to the roster. “The horrors of the national late-term abortion industry are continuing to come to light, one atrocity at a time,” he said. “Sadly, some of those same atrocities happen in our own state.”

Even if the legislation failed Tuesday, Mr. Perry could call another special session to have lawmakers take up the matter again.

Manny Fernandez reported from Houston, and Erik Eckholm from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on June 25, 2013, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Texas House Restricts Abortions in a Move That Could Force Clinics to Shut. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe